ALISON HAD A SPLIT second to make her decision. Shifting into low gear, she aimed for the spot just behind the flatbed where the damaged house section still clung to it. Closing her eyes and lowering her head behind the steering wheel, she braced for the collision. A heavy jolt rocked the Ram, accompanied by the sounds of splintering wood, scraping metal, and fracturing glass. When she looked up, a huge spider web-like crack covered the left portion of the windshield. But she had made it through. Even better, a large debris field covered most of the left two lanes of the highway. While one police car stopped to attend to the accident site, the other slowed to a near crawl as it negotiated the scene.
If she wanted to save the boss, it was now or never while she still had an open road and no police interference.
She saw the tanker a good half mile in the lead and pulling away rapidly. Alison accelerated again, trying to ignore the whistling wind and shards of loose glass coming from the damaged windshield. She reached over and grabbed the shotgun.
NO ONE WAS more surprised than Drake that he still clung to the side of the tanker. The vampire had stopped trying to knock him off. Not that it mattered. He could feel his arms and hands going numb, and knew he would not be able to hold on much longer.
Out of the corner of his eye, Drake saw Alison begin to pass the tanker on the left as they entered the off ramp for the Inner Loop of the Beltway. She raced along the off ramp’s shoulder, staying just far enough to the rear so that she would not be spotted by the vampire while they made the turn. At the last second, she gunned it so that the Ram pulled even with the cab as they merged onto the Beltway. Racing from the off ramp at over sixty miles per hour, both vehicles cut off several cars and trucks. Tires screeched and horns blared as traffic swerved to avoid an accident, forcing all four lanes of the Beltway to a stop. Good, thought Drake, now we don’t have to worry about innocent bystanders.
They were only half a mile from the Woodrow Wilson Bridge.
Alison let go of the steering wheel just long enough to blare the horn. The vampire turned to look, and found himself staring into the twin barrels of the shotgun.
Alison pulled the trigger.
The thunderous roar and flash from the gunpowder momentarily blinded her. When the smoke cleared, she saw the remains of the vampire’s head staring back at her. The face and top of its skull had been blown away, leaving large flaps of dead flesh that folded backwards like the petals of a gory flower. Its lower jaw remained intact as well as a fragment of the upper left jaw that hung loosely, still attached to a strand of flesh. Whiffs of white smoke drifted upwards from the mass of gore as the holy water reacted with pure evil. The vampire tried to hiss, both out of pain and hatred, but could only manage a bloody gurgle. Instead, it turned back to the road and futilely tried to steer.
Alison dropped her speed just enough to fall back parallel with the tanker, then slid as close as possible to the vehicle, placing the bed directly under the dangling Drake. The truck started swaying, grinding the tanker against the Ram and threatening to push it away. Alison steered into the tanker and blared the horn.
Drake let go. He dropped into the Ram’s bed with a heavy thud that knocked the wind out of him. Looking up, he saw the tandem wheels of the tanker only a few feet away, threatening to crush the Ram’s bed and him with it. Alison pulled into the center of the Beltway and slowed. When the Ram came to a stop, Drake stood up, ignoring the throbbing in his legs and knees and back, anxious to see what happened next. Alison stepped out of the cab and stood by the open door.
Entering the approaches to the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, the vampire attempted to keep the tanker straight, but had no way of knowing that the far right lane was closed for construction. The truck hit the jersey barriers blocking the lane and careened to the left at a forty-five degree angle. Not knowing what it had hit, the creature instinctively turned the steering wheel back to the right, sideswiping the barrier a second time. The cab spun one hundred and eighty degrees. The tanker, however, continued traveling straight. Ripping itself free from the trailer connection, the tanker bounced over the cab’s rear chassis and up onto the jersey barrier. The grinding of metal against cement accompanied a panorama of sparks, but only for a few seconds. The hull of the tanker ruptured under the pressure, spewing forth a stream of gasoline that was immediately ignited by the sparks. Drake watched the tanker erupt into a mushroom cloud of orange-red flames and oily smoke.
A few seconds later, a headless figure staggered through the inferno rapidly spread across the bridge. Engulfed by flames so intense that even cement and metal melted, the thing should already be destroyed. Yet it fought to survive. With each step, strips of dead flesh seared off and blew away, revealing muscles and organs that shriveled in the heat. Finally yielding to the inevitable, the vampire stopped. It let out a guttural howl from its shattered, burnt throat that sounded as if it had come straight from the depths of hell. The howling stopped only when the body crumbled into dust, which was instantly blown apart by the intense winds caused by the conflagration.
Only then did Drake become aware of the flashing red and blue lights reflecting off the metallic surface of the Ram. Alison stood facing to the rear, her hands clasped behind her head. A sharp, angry voice focused Drake’s concentration.
“You on the pick-up. I said place your hands behind your head and turn around. Now!”
In one slow motion, Drake turned around and raised his hands behind his head until his fingers interlocked. One of the police cars that had been chasing them sat twenty feet away. Two police officers stood by the front of the car, their pistols trained on Drake and Alison.
The older of the two cops, a muscular Hispanic with Rodriguez displayed on his nameplate, used the same angry voice on Drake again. “Get off the pick-up, slowly, and move beside your girlfriend.”
Drake complied. The two cops cautiously moved closer. Then the Hispanic sighed and rolled his eyes. “Oh, Christ. I should have known.”
“What do you mean?” asked his partner.
“You’re in the presence of a celebrity,” Rodriguez said sarcastically. “You’re about to arrest Drake Matthews.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. You’ll get sick of him soon enough.” Holstering his pistol, Rodriguez removed a pair of handcuffs from his belt and motioned for Drake to turn around. “I assume you won’t give me any trouble?”
Drake turned lowered his hands behind his back. “Do I ever?”
2.
MARK ROACH SAT behind his desk, his eyes closed, massaging his forehead. It did little good. He had one of his special migraines, a whopper of a headache that would sit with him most of the day and defy every attempt, medicinal or homeopathic, to suppress it. This particular migraine was called Drake Matthews.
As chief of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C. for the past decade, Roach had more than his share of problems. Violent crime. Street crime. Narcotics. Prostitution. Rush hour traffic. Thousands of misdemeanor and nuisance complaints a year. And, given the nature of this city, the occasional management of a massive political demonstration or the containment of the fallout from a scandal involving some politico. He anticipated these and planned for their every contingency. Yet nothing in his experience or training prepared him for Matthews.
Drake Matthews first came to Roach’s attention three months ago when his officers responded to a brawl in a biker bar near the Navy Yard. They had expected two motorcycle gangs rumbling to the death, with the usual share of knife and gunshot wounds. What they found looked like a war zone. Busted furniture. A pool table broken in half along its width. Broken pool cues impaled into the walls and floor, each surrounded by a pile of ash. A dozen bikers strewn around the debris with wounds ranging from bruises and lacerations to broken bones and concussions. And in the middle of it all Drake Matthews and Alison Monroe, the only ones still standing, Alison clutching a broken pool cue and Drake holding a wooden stake. The arresting officers did not believe these two could gen
erate all that havoc alone, and the bikers refused to talk or press charges, so the two were charged with thirteen counts of assault and battery plus assault with a deadly weapon, with a few charges of malicious destruction of property thrown in for good measure.
But Roach’s headaches had only just begun. Two days after the arrest, the mayor received a visit from a Mr. Smith. He claimed to represent a powerful anonymous benefactor who wanted Drake and Alison released for reasons he was not at liberty to explain. To his credit, the mayor refused to release either of them, at least not without knowing the full details, with which Mr. Smith refused to come forth with. The mayor had dismissed the enigmatic figure, bringing the incident to a close. Or so they thought.
Over the next three days, the anonymous benefactor revealed how much power and influence he actually possessed. He targeted the mayor’s pet project to build a multi-million-dollar sports arena/convention center to bring revenue into the capitol. Despite the deal being within days of being signed, the contractor hired to construct the center was suddenly (and anonymously) made aware of numerous arcane building codes that could significantly delay the project. Then the bank that had agreed to underwrite the venture pulled out unexpectedly and with no explanation. When one of the major corporations that originally had agreed to sponsor the project backed out with no notice, the mayor finally took the hint. He ordered Drake and Alison released later that same day and all charges were dropped.
The police arrested Drake and Alison twice more during the next three months. In each instance, the mayor ordered their release within twenty-four hours. Roach protested the decision each time, and each time he had been dressed down and made to feel like the one in the wrong. This time, though, it would be different.
Roach opened the file folder from last night’s arrest and looked at the mug shot photos. Neither of them looked threatening at first glance. Drake, though forty-five, looked no older than his late thirties. Clean shaven with dark blonde hair cut an inch in length, he looked the all-American type. But then, so did Ted Bundy. That infuriating smirk spoke volumes about his attitude. On the other hand, Alison’s mug shot photo looked like a publicity still for a model. Her raven black hair, cut in a shoulder-length bob just slightly tussled from racing through the streets of Washington, complemented a pair of sensuous brown eyes. Intelligent and attractive, Alison should have been living in northern Virginia juggling a family and a career rather than helping to run the biggest crime spree in the city’s history.
None of that mattered anymore because Drake had outdone himself this time. They already had him for assault on a minor and, depending on what had happened in that stall at Union Station, possibly sexual assault. With luck they could put him away for years, or at the very least hound him as a sexual predator for the rest of his life. Although Roach could never get the assault charges to stick in Alison’s case, she had racked up so many other violations he could put away Alison’s pretty little ass for so long that by the time she got out of prison he would have long since retired. Her joy ride through Washington would be good for at least a dozen moving vehicle citations, such as driving to endanger and failing to stop for a police officer, not to mention illegal possession of a firearm and destruction of property. Once they found the remains of the truck driver killed in the explosion at the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, first degree murder would be added to the litany. None of this included what Virginia and Maryland would charge them with.
Nope. This time Drake and Alison had gotten themselves into deeper trouble than even their anonymous benefactor could get them out of. Too many jurisdictions wanted a piece of their ass. Too many….
The knock on the door brought Roach out of his reverie. “Who is it?”
“It’s me.” Pushing the door open, Robert Dekker, the chief medical examiner, stuck his head inside. He held up a file folder. “I have the test results you asked for.”
“Let me see them.”
Dekker stepped into the office, closed the door behind him, and brought the folder over to Roach. Roach opened it and, as he started reading, motioned for Dekker to take a seat. He flipped through each of the three pages, scanning the text until he reached the conclusion. As he read, his eyes narrowed in disbelief, and he shook his head.
“Bob, this is bullshit.”
“The data doesn’t lie.”
Roach closed the folder and tossed it on his desk. “The machine you ran the test with must be wrong.”
“That’s what I originally thought. So I recalibrated it and tested my own DNA. Everything seemed in order, so I ran a second test against the jawbone fragment found at the crash site.”
“And?”
“And I got the same results.”
Roach stood up and looked out the window. “The machine is wrong.”
Dekker shook his head with the self-assuredness of someone who places more faith in science than in people. “It’s working fine.”
“Then you must have made the mistake.”
Dekker did not take the insult personally. “Maybe once. But not three times. I know you don’t agree with the data, but it’s accurate.”
Though Roach hated to admit it, Dekker was right. He did not like or agree with Dekker’s results, but he could not dispute their accuracy. That bothered him. If accurate, the data had implications he did not want to consider. Roach could barely believe it himself. He would be damned if he would try and explain it to the mayor.
Turning from the window, Roach slid into his seat. He opened the lower drawer of his desk, placed the folder inside, and closed it. Then he sighed. “Keep this report quiet for now.”
“Are you going to suppress it?”
“What do you expect me to do?” Roach held up a hand, cutting off Dekker’s response. “Can you imagine what the media would do to us if I announced those results during a press conference? We’d be lucky if all the mayor asked for were our resignations. Sorry. This is not a reflection on you, but there’s no way in hell…”
Another knock on the door interrupted Roach.
“Come in,” said Roach.
Sergeant Juan Rodriguez entered the room and wished the men good morning, then stood silently, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
Roach became impatient. “This ain’t the break room, Rodriguez. What do you want?”
“Sorry, sir. The mayor just called and… and…”
“And ordered us to release Drake Matthews and Alison Monroe?” Roach sighed heavily. His frustration and anger got the better of him, and he slammed a hand against the top of the desk. “God dammit.”
“Did you expect anything different?” asked Dekker.
“I figured this time we had the bastard.” Roach massaged his forehead, trying to relieve the throbbing. “Can we transfer jurisdiction to Maryland or Virginia?”
Rodriguez shook his head and braced himself for the tirade he knew would follow. “I checked with the Maryland State Police as well as the police in Prince George’s County. They’ve already been ordered to drop all charges. Looks like Matthews’ benefactor has more influence than we originally thought.”
Roach leered at him. “Sounds like you admire the son of a bitch.”
Dekker chuckled. “Fascinated is more like it. Makes you wonder who’s behind this guy. Especially in light of that.” He motioned toward the desk drawer containing the egregious file.
Roach cast Dekker a withering look. He leaned back in his seat and turned to Rodriguez, giving in to the inevitable. “There’s nothing we can do. Release Miss Monroe. No sense keeping her any longer than we have to.”
“What about Matthews?” asked Rodriguez.
“We can hold him for up to forty-eight hours without charging him. When will that time be up?”
“Midnight tonight.”
“Release him then, but not a minute before we have to. Is that clear?”
Rodriguez nodded.
Roach turned to Dekker. “And are we clear on everything?”
Dekker smiled
and offered a mock salute.
“Good. Dismissed.”
Roach waited until both men left, then opened the drawer and pulled out the file folder, thumbing through it one final time before replacing it. He would shred it later. Unfortunately, he could not dispose of Drake Matthews that easily. Bringing that charlatan to justice would be hard enough. Releasing him after last night’s fiasco, however, meant there would now be fewer restrictions on how the police could handle him. One thing was certain. Roach might have to release Matthews tonight, but he felt confident that the two men would cross paths again very soon.
* * *
JUGGLING A VENTI CAPPUCCINO in one hand while clutching the shoulder straps of an oversized handbag in the other always presented Jessica Reynolds with her biggest challenge while riding the Metro. Today proved exceptionally grueling. The accident that closed the Woodrow Wilson Bridge had turned the Beltway into a parking lot, forcing many a dedicated driver onto the commuter rail system. What would normally have been a relaxing fifteen-minute train ride into the District from Ballston had taken on the aspects of a crowded cattle car ride to the slaughterhouse. By the time her train crossed under the Potomac, enough commuters had jammed aboard each car that Jessica had practically no room to move. Half a dozen people jostled her from all sides. Shielding the cappuccino as if it were plutonium, she barely managed not to spill any.
At least until her last stop at Judicial Station. The twin doors slid open and Jessica followed a throng of commuters onto the safety of the platform. Just as she exited the car, a dour-looking businessman in a dark gray overcoat pushed his way past, his elbow slamming into Jessica’s hand. The cup imploded, propelling off the lid and erupting the contents all over Jessica’s pantsuit. She stood on the platform, arms outstretched, cappuccino dripping from her hands and soaked cloths.
The Vampire Hunters: Book I of The Vampire Hunters Trilogy Page 2
